Privacy policy
The Outside View · Last updated: October 23, 2026
This policy explains what personal information The Outside View (outsideview.news and our mobile apps) collects, why, who sees it, and what you can do about it. We collect as little as we can: no advertising, no third-party trackers, and we do not sell your data. The person responsible for the protection of personal information is the operator of the Service, reachable at contact@outsideview.news.
1. What we collect
- Account: your email address, a hashed password (we never store it in clear), your display name (a pseudonym is fine), optionally a country and a profile picture (resized to 256 pixels).
- Preferences: the countries you follow, the outlets you subscribe to, your languages, your feed layout, and the articles you mark as read or that you open from the site (kept to leave them out of your feeds; visible only to you).
- What you publish: ratings and the “propaganda” flag, comments, reports you send, and messages in circles. Circle membership and the circles you create are stored too.
- Blocks and reports: the readers you block in the app, and the reports you file about content.
- Technical data: a session cookie that keeps you signed in (in the apps, a session token stored securely on your phone), and server logs (IP address, user agent, pages requested) used for security and diagnosing faults.
- Visitors without an account: a random anonymous cookie (
ov_vid, no IP address) lets us count page views and returning visitors by country page. It is not set if your browser sends Do-Not-Track, and you can block it in your browser. Signed-in readers are not counted this way. - Contact: when you write to contact@outsideview.news or use the removal request form, we keep your message and the address you wrote from, to answer you.
We do not collect your precise location, contacts, or payment details. The Service does not currently send you emails; when it does (for example account verification or a weekly selection), we will say so here first.
2. Why we use it
To run your account and keep you signed in; to personalise your feed (countries, languages, read articles); to display ratings, comments and circles; to keep the Service safe and handle reports and abuse; to measure how many people use the Service, in aggregate; to answer you; and to meet legal obligations. We do not use your data for advertising and we do not make decisions about you by automated means beyond showing you the feed you configured.
Legal basis where the European GDPR applies: the contract with you (running your account), our legitimate interests (security, anonymous statistics, moderation), your consent (optional profile picture and the content you choose to publish), and legal obligations. In Quebec and the rest of Canada we rely on your consent, given when you create an account and use the features, and which you can withdraw by deleting your account.
3. Your reading activity is private
The outlets you subscribe to, the countries you follow, your languages and the articles you have read are visible only to you. In a circle you join, the About page lists the paid outlets that at least one member subscribes to, without saying who, and articles from those outlets carry a “Circle” tag for the other members. Your individual ratings are never shown with your name; only totals are shown. Your display name, picture and comments are visible to other readers. Messages in a circle are visible to the members of that circle (and to the moderators if reported).
4. Who else handles your data
- Hosting: the website and the database run on Fly.io, in Paris, France; the background worker that collects articles runs in Toronto, Canada. Fly.io processes the data on our behalf.
- Article analysis: to translate headlines and score articles we send each article's headline, outlet name, link and the short page description published by the outlet to a language-model provider (DeepSeek). No account data and no reader data is sent. Article data is public information, not personal data about you.
- News sources: we read public news feeds (Google News) and the head of article pages to collect articles. This involves no data about you.
- Outlets: pictures shown next to a headline are loaded from the outlet's own servers, and the links lead to the outlet's website. Those outlets then see your IP address and the fact that you came from our site, like any website you visit; their own privacy policies apply from then on. Links from the mobile app carry a label saying the visit came from the app.
- Authorities: we disclose information if the law obliges us to, or to protect the safety of readers and of the Service.
We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.
5. Cookies and local storage
ov_session: keeps you signed in (necessary; HttpOnly).ov_vid: anonymous visit counting for readers without an account (about 13 months; refused with Do-Not-Track).- A small preference stored in your browser to remember that you closed the app banner. It never leaves your device.
6. How long we keep it
Account data, preferences and the content you publish are kept until you delete your account or your content. When you delete your account, your profile, sessions, comments, ratings, follows, subscriptions, read history and messages are deleted from our database; circles that become empty are removed. Backups may keep copies for a short time afterwards. Server logs are kept for a short period, generally no more than 90 days. Anonymous visit events are kept for 13 months, then only daily totals remain. Reports and moderation records may be kept longer when needed to deal with abuse. Messages to contact@outsideview.news are kept as long as needed to deal with them.
7. Where your data is stored
In France (Fly.io, Paris) and, for the collection worker, in Canada. If you use the Service from another country, your data is transferred there. For transfers outside your country, including from the European Economic Area or Quebec, we rely on the safeguards of our hosting provider (standard contractual clauses) and on the limited nature of the data kept.
8. Security
Passwords are hashed, sessions are stored hashed, connections use HTTPS, administrative access is restricted and every administrative action is logged. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts you at risk we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.
9. Your rights
You can see and edit your profile and preferences, and delete your account and its data, from Account settings at any time. You can also write to contact@outsideview.news to ask for a copy of your data, a correction, to object to or restrict a use, to withdraw consent, or for deletion. We reply within 30 days. Depending on where you live (GDPR in Europe; Law 25 in Quebec; PIPEDA and other Canadian laws), you may also have the right to data portability and to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority (in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information; in Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; in the EU, your national authority).
10. Children
The Service is not meant for people under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from them; if you think a child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.
11. Changes
We may update this policy; the date at the top shows the latest version, and we will announce important changes on the Service. See also our Terms of use and Community guidelines.